International Students’ Day – Global Call for Action – 17 November 2015

Download the Global Call for Action 2015

Download the Toolkit-International Students’ Day 2015

On the International Students’ Day we, students from all over the globe, stand together and united as students and as humans to call for freedom of movement, freedom to study and freedom to live in dignity.

In the world we live in, we feel it is necessary to build a strong network to raise awareness and build mutual understanding and solidarity, not only among our communities but also towards the many human beings – studying and learning in many different ways in different moments of their lives – fleeing their countries because of conflicts, bad socio-economic situations and because they wish to fulfil their lives seeking for better conditions somewhere else in the world.

We call on governments all over the world to guarantee the right to study to everyone regardless of  their socio-economic, cultural, religious and sexual background. This should be done with a particular focus to include migrants and refugees, as retaining segregation by country of origin is unacceptable in a globalised, cosmopolitan world.

As citizens of the world before citizens of a particular country or political union, we have the dream that one day countries will be able to guarantee the right to enter a country to everyone and to benefit from the same quality education as the rest of the citizens do. Furthermore we call on governments to build mutual cooperation and solidarity in order to ensure that no country is in the position of welcoming everyone at the expenses of the quality of the life that they can ensure to the local and to the migrant community. As humans it is our duty include and give chances to those who seek for them, through adequate universal welfare measure in order to ensure dignity, selffulfilment and equal opportunities to each and every member of our communities.

Furthermore, in the recent years, due to the economic and financial crisis governments from all over the world have been cutting public spending particularly on education in the name of protecting the public interest. We call on States to stop this trend and to properly finance education, with particular regard to human rights and citizenship education as transversal, value-based subjects that foster global citizenship, a necessity if we are to promote a culture of peace and thus alleviate the conflict and poverty which creates unsustainable migration flows.
Promotion of this active citizenship is also crucial in order to combat and halt once and for all the populist racist movements on the rise around the world. We cannot accept xenophobia at any stage of education and we will act peacefully in order to contrast them and build a new culture of acceptance, understanding and mutual learning and enrichment.

Finally, on a practical note, we call on leaders from across the world to find pathways to the recognition of prior learning of the many students who are moving from one part of the world to another. Education is a process and we believe that nobody should have the power to prevent us to continue learning and sharing knowledge somewhere else in the world. Few of us are content to permanently leave our countries to seek better material and educational conditions but it should be recognised that sometimes this is necessary for us in order to fulfil our aspirations as human beings.

Today, on the International Students’ Day we want to celebrate diversity in educational institutions and we want to shout out loud that we must be #free2learn and #free2move not only within our countries and our continents but all over the world we currently live in and the word we are building for the future.

Over the next few weeks we will be publishing a toolkit for actions to make sure we act both locally and globally in this direction to build  solidarity not only among students but also among broader civil society, parents, teachers, migrant associations.

Join the action on social media also sharing what you wish you could be #free2 do, not only on the 17th November, but every day to make schools, university and societies a better place to live in.

To sign the call please email at 17now@obessu.org.